"Beyond Questioning" Sermon: Isaiah 45:9-13 (manuscript)

 

“Beyond Questioning”

[Isaiah 45:9-13]

October 11/18, 2020 YouTube

            God explains to Jerusalem that He is going to raise up a pagan king named Cyrus in about one hundred and seventy years.  This will be after Jerusalem has been in captivity for seventy years.  And God says that He is Sovereign over the life of Cyrus.  God will raise him up and work through him to conquer the nations and eventually send Jerusalem back to the land with the materials to rebuild the city and the Temple.

            God explains to Jerusalem that He is the God of History and He has plans and purposes that will come to pass for all of Creation.

            And we don’t have to imagine what the response of Jerusalem is to this because of this morning’s text.

            “What’s wrong with You, God?  You’re going to raise up a pagan king and make the way for him to destroy nations and become extremely powerful and then send us back to the land.  Why don’t You raise up a hero from among our own people?  Aren’t we Your chosen people?  What will it look like if You use a pagan king to restore Your people?  You haven’t thought this through.  This will make fools of us and You.  Do You understand?”

            And God responds:

            First, God is beyond questioning.

            “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’? Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor?’”  

            God tells Jerusalem that her complaint is absurd.

            “Are you out of your minds?  Are you really going to fight against the One Who made You?  Are you, like one pot among many pots that the Potter has made, going to rise up and say you were made wrong?  Is the clay going to rise up against the Potter and demand to know what the Potter is making or why the thing the Potter is making doesn’t have handles?”

            Similarly, as Paul explains that God chooses some people for salvation and allows the rest to be judged in their sin, he writes, “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?” (Romans 9:20-24, ESV).

            We have the history of Job, who loses his wealth and loses his children, and his wife denies God, and Job suffers physically, and by the wisdom of his friends, and finally Job cries out for answers and says, “Oh, that I had one to hear me! (Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!) Oh, that I had the indictment written by my adversary! Surely I would carry it on my shoulder; I would bind it on me as a crown; I would give him an account of all my steps; like a prince I would approach him” (Job 31:35-37, ESV).

            “God.  Are you listening?  What did I do?  Will You answer me and explain Yourself?  Why are You doing this to me?  Why don’t You explain Yourself?  If I sinned, I will own my sin and it’s punishment but keeping me in the dark isn’t fair.”

            The other example is about pregnancy – questioning God on things He has not revealed is like demanding man explain to you why he is having a child.  “How can you bring a child into this world when he will die as the climate changes and the world becomes uninhabitable?  Don’t you care about people?” Or demanding to know what a woman is giving birth to. “Is it a boy or a girl?  You’re going to want it to be a boy.  At least a boy can do things around the house and be a help.  A girl is only a burden.  You must raise her up and then pay for her wedding.  But she could marry someone wealthy and support you in your old age.  And the boy might be a slacker and not be worth anything.  What are you having?  What will his life be like?”

            God does not give us all the answers we would like.

            And we understand this.  Things happen that don’t seem right to us.  In November – or whenever it is settled – it is likely that half the country will cry out to God, “How could You allow Donald Trump to serve another four years?” Or “How could You allow Joe Biden to become President of the United States?”  “What were You thinking?”

            What we need to recognize is that God presides over the fortunes of His people.  In other words, God is Sovereign over His people – all we who believe in Jesus savingly – God does what will bring His Plan to the glorious end He intends – and for the good of those who love Him (cf., Romans 8:28). And we do not have the right to demand that He answer our questions.

            God has a plan, and it will come to pass exactly as He intended from before the Creation.  God does not have to correct course or change due to unforeseen circumstances.  No, everything that happens – even evil and sin – are part of God’s Plan, though God never does evil or sins and does not force anyone to do evil or sin.

            We remember that Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers, and when they meet up years later, Joseph says, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20, ESV).

            In Joseph’s case, he is given an answer as to why God gives him the life he lives.  But that is not always the case.  We can ask questions of God, we see that happen all the time in the Psalms, but we are not right to question the Authority of God. God does whatsoever He pleases to accomplish His Will.  So, God is beyond questioning in this way. 

            We can ask God if He willing do such and such, but we are not to ask God Who He thinks He is to do such and such.  God’s Authority and His use of it are beyond questioning.  Jerusalem is wrong to ask God what is wrong with Him for using Cyrus.

            Peter, writing to Christians suffering persecution, writes, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen” (I Peter 5:6-11, ESV).

            For example, God is Sovereign over Covid. And God has His reasons for its existing and for each person who gets sick or dies from it.  We have no right to raise our fists to God and ask Him why He thought including Covid in His Plan was a good idea.  Peter reminds us to humble ourselves under the Mighty Hand of God.

            If God wants us to know, He will make it known, if God does not want His reasons known, we have no right – it is a sin – to accuse God’s actions because we do not have an explicit reason from God.

            Why did God choose to use a pagan king to deliver Jerusalem? God’s Plan is beyond questioning.  Be humble.  Be thankful for all you have and are.

            Second, God is Sovereign.

            Continuing with the theme we have touched on, God explains that not only is it wrong to question Him as an accuser, but God is also Sovereign over all things, so He is absolutely in control at all times.

            “Thus says the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and the one who formed him: ‘Ask me of things to come; will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? I made the earth and created man on it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host.’”

            God says, “it is one thing to question and accuse Me like the clay to the potter or like outsiders to the parents of an impending child, but it is even more intolerable to receive accusatory questions about how I sovereignly carry out My Plans for My people and for the Creation that I created. Don’t You think I deserve some credit – even if You don’t understand and think you would do things differently – as the Creator of everything that is and the One Who called you to be My people?”

            Jerusalem shaking her fist at God for choosing Cyrus to be a great power and the one to free Jerusalem from captivity and supply her needs for her return and rebuilding is not unlike Jesus’ explaining His suffering and death to His disciples and Peter responding, “And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you’” (Matthew 16:22, ESV).

            Jesus reveals that He will suffer and die, and Peter’s response is to say, “You don’t know what You’re talking about.  Stop talking that way.  It will never happen.  I won’t allow it.  If You tell me that’s God’s Plan, then God is off His rocker.  No, it will never happen.”

            Really, Peter?  You don’t think that the God Who created you and all of Creation might be a little more knowledgeable and be sovereignly in control over this – even if you don’t understand how it will all work out?

            How will Covid work out?  How will the election work out?  I’m sure we all know the best way these and other things should work out – and we tell God what He is to do.  Yet, the God Who created all of Creation, is sovereignly control of these things and all of history, and we must bow before His Will in humility, even when we don’t know what it is.

            Know that the God Who is Sovereign over the Creation is sovereign over history.

“’I have stirred him up in righteousness, and I will make all his ways level; he shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward,’ says the LORD of hosts.”

God says, “You can question My sanity and My choices as much as You want, but what I have ordained in history will come to pass.  I have stirred up Cyrus in righteousness – you cannot show that I have done something morally wrong is using him to deliver you.  I will make his ways level – he will accomplish everything I have put on his heart and in his mind, and he will be the one to free Jerusalem and to build the city and the Temple in accordance with My eternal plan.  He will not do this because I have bribed him, but because I am the Sovereign of History and set it down that it should happen.”

The prophet Ezra tells us that this all came to pass as God ordained:

“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing:

“’Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem’” (Ezra 1:1-4, ESV).

God is Sovereign.

So, how should we act when we don’t think God is doing the right thing, or when we wonder if He is truly Sovereign?  Let us stay in our place, which is in the hands of our Sovereign God.

Let us consider Job’s response, recalling God’s questions to him:

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’  I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:2-6, ESV).

When we are talking about the Authority and Sovereignty of God to act according to His Eternal Plan, we are not to question if God hasn’t made a bad decision. Rather, we are to receive what our loving Father has for us.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, there are many things we don’t understand, and You have told us to come to You in prayer, but we sin if we come to You to criticize or question Your Plan or Sovereignty.  Humble us and help us to trust You whatever Your Plan is for us.  In Jesus’ Name, Amen.